


It's a Long, Cold Road

by Footloose



Series: Loaded March EXTRAS [9]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Military
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 02:14:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Footloose/pseuds/Footloose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of his courtmartial, Merlin faces both a long recovery from his injuries and a struggle to contain the raw anger he feels.</p>
<p>The world would be a darker place if it weren't for Will.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's a Long, Cold Road

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of the Prompt Request #2 Round for Loaded March Extras: 
> 
> Prompted by [hangebokhan](http://hangebokhan.livejournal.com/) (LJ):  
>  _"This could be considered either pre-LM or Radioman. I am wondering, could you give us a day in the life of Will and Merlin as Artists? I can just see Merlin in his class being called over by a student with a problem and Merlin saying "Goddamnit Pearson, you had better not be calling me over there because there 'is some bleepy red thing on the screen' again!"_
> 
> * * *

Clearly, when Merlin had been given the choice of taking an early discharge -- cleverly disguised as an administrative posting where he could lounge around in duty uniform, pushing around paper for the last two years of his enlistment period, or taking instructor's leave from active duty to mould impressionable young minds to the dark and dirty of encryption and computer espionage -- he'd been on drugs.

The good ones.

The ones that made everything nice and numb and left him in a drowsy haze, waxing philosophical over the quality of the cherry Jell-O at the Veteran's Hospital and how the intensity of flavour could be plotted against not who had made it, when it had been made, or whether the cafeteria was using the generic gelatine powder or the real deal, but with how fucking _shitty_ someone happened to be feeling that particular day.

Those were the same drugs that he'd been on while sitting uncomfortably in dress uniform in a stiff chair during his courtmartial, hoping to all the Gods that he wasn't going to pop a stitch and bleed through, because dress uniforms were a bloody bitch to clean. They were the same drugs he'd been on when sitting on the witness stand, battered with questions from the military barristers, and those drugs had left him unpleasantly confused, emotionally detached, and light-headed, as if he were about to faint at any moment.

Which he had done. Only a few times, though.

Merlin dimly remembering shaking out the last two pills of the _good stuff_ from the prescription bottle right before the Brass came up to him, shook his hand, gave him some sort of _we knew this had to be some sort of misunderstanding_ bollocks and made him the offer.

At the time, it had seemed like a good idea. Train kids, make them better, make them _smarter_. Instructor leave tended to be in quarters or in halves, and at the most, Merlin would be recuperating and rehabilitating for three to six months before he was rotated back into active duty.

And then there were days like today, students like these, that almost, _almost_ made Merlin wish he'd died on the fucking battlefield.

"What," he asked, and maybe his tone was a little too sharp, because several of the greenies ducked their heads down, shoulders up. One of them looked ready to dive for a nonexistent foxhole.

Pearson had the good grace to be contrite. He lowered his raised arm and cleared his throat. "Sorry, sir. I just can't seem to get the software to accept the key code."

_Again?_ , Merlin didn't groan out loud. Instead, he leaned against his desk and crossed his arms. "Is the sim giving you the red blinky light again?"

"No, sir," Pearson said. Merlin raised a brow. Pearson deflated. "Yes, sir, but I did what you told me to and got past that, but --"

"Yeah?" 

The greenie sitting next to Pearson -- a kid who was smart enough to remember sequence steps and to perform them as instructed rather than to try to _think_ on his own -- risked a glance at Pearson's computer screen. The greenie grimaced. Merlin took that as a bad sign. The simulators were designed to take a substantial amount of abuse until the newest batch of recruits could work out how to problem-solve on their own, but it took a special sort of talent to repeatedly trigger an error.

The same one.

Eight times.

Maybe Merlin should check the sim on Pearson's computer to make sure that there wasn't a programming glitch.

"What is it now?" Merlin asked.

"Um. I'm not sure how to describe it, sir," Pearson said. He reached for the monitor, tilting it so that Merlin could see. The screen was pale blue, and there was white lettering in the center -- the too-familiar Blue Screen of Death. Considering that the computers were using off-the-shelf operating systems, Merlin shouldn't have been surprised. He resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose.

Maybe Merlin should call it a day before the _not-as-good-as-the-good-stuff_ painkillers wore off and he ended up undoing all the progress that the physiotherapy had gained on his recovery. He still didn't have full range of motion on his arm yet, but he was nearly there.

"You know what? Shut down your terminals," Merlin said.

"Are you letting us out early?" the greenie next to Pearson asked, hopeful.

Merlin reached into a file folder for the problem set he'd put together the night before. "I was thinking, since the lot of you seem incapable of handling a simple decrypt sim, you're best off doing it the old fashioned way."

"What way's that, sir?" one of the more promising greenies asked.

"Pencil and paper," Merlin said. The feeling of self-satisfaction only deepened when everyone in the room groaned. "No calculators. And no one leaves until at least one of you gets the answer."

 

* * *

 

Merlin eventually _had_ to let the greenies out -- there were regulations to follow, and, quite unfairly, none of them condoned cruel and unusual punishment. Making twelve greenies crack a straight thirty-two bit encryption without even a calculator apparently fit the description of _cruel and unusual_.

Merlin shifted on the hard cot, adjusting and readjusting his position, but there really was no way to sit comfortably. The wound itself had been small, but the emergency battlefield surgery hadn't been too fussed on niceties, and the medics had torn him open, front and back, to remove the bullet and all of its scattered fragments before he bled out. Merlin was grateful to be alive, he really was, but he hadn't gotten a good night's sleep since the doctors had weaned him off the morphine.

The base doctor wouldn't give him anything stronger than paracetamol, the stingy bastard, though Merlin could understand the man's suspicion. Some of the trainers enjoyed their jobs, but the rest of them tried to escape the constant frustration using whatever resources they could. Certain drugs weren't kept on the base anymore, or were, at the very least, well-hidden.

Merlin stared at Will enviously. Somehow, Will had managed to acquire the entire liquid stock of a pub and had hidden it in his cramped quarters. Merlin would join him in his latest attempt to numb his senses if he didn't have an appointment with the physiotherapist at the crack of bloody dawn.

"I can't decide," Will said, glancing between the bottle of rum and the bottle of vodka. He shrugged helplessly and took a hefty swig from both. He wiped the dribble down his chin with the back of his sleeve, and pointed a finger at Merlin. "I can't decide if you're a cranky git because of this whole bollocks you've gone through, or if you've been hiding a mean streak all this time and I've never noticed?"

"Huh? What?"

"They talk about you, you know. The brats, they do, their lips flapping about Merlin Emrys this, Merlin Emrys that. They fucking worship the ground you walk on, you know? At first, it were about the ambush and you surviving. Then it were the rumours you were getting strung up at the trial. They were right excited when they found out you were coming here to train the wee little ones," Will said, scowling at the label on the bottle of vodka, squinting to see the fine print. "Now they just want you to get better and go away. You're worse than the drill sergeant, and that's saying something."

Merlin snorted. "It's not my fault they're giving me bloody idiots to train."

"Well. No," Will said, shrugging. He waved magnanimously with the bottle of rum, conceding the point. "That's a fair cop. My boys aren't the brightest either, but at least they know enough to shoot the broadside of a barn."

"Assuming they recognize it as a barn," Merlin said.

Again, Will swept the air with the rum. "They'll never be us, and they're never meant to be us, Merls. We're a special breed. Don't make them the way they used to, broke the mould and all that rubbish. You remember the debrief when you came on base?"

Merlin crossed his arms. He promptly uncrossed them; the movement pulled at the baby-fresh scar tissue on his back. "You mean the kid-glove treatment? The please-and-thank-you routine they gave me? I don't remember half of it --"

" _Kid glove_? You mean to say they kowtowed to you? That's bloody bollocks!" Will plonked the two bottles of alcohol on the table with a loud thump. "Oi, that's not fair. I got the dressing-down --"

"Probably deserved it, too --"

"It weren't my fault they lost their last sniper on patrol --"

"Who knows what kind of instruction you're giving those kids --"

"Or that they didn't have another shooter worth a damn --"

"You're probably teaching them how the rules are all _optional_ \--"

"Anyway, it doesn't matter, I did what they told me to do --"

"What did you give them, that they'd believe you ever would --"

"They told me to disable the bloody rabbit we'd gotten, were getting tired of him always running off. They wanted him reasonably intact; not my fault he twisted left instead of going right and got a bullet in his nut. It were meant for his leg -- and that weren't my point," Will said, pointing a finger at Merlin.

Merlin smirked. Of course Will would get sent down on instructor training whenever he took too many liberties with his orders. The sad part was that the Brass still hadn't caught on. Merlin wasn't fooled. Will needed breaks from his missions, and frequent ones; it didn't hurt that he happened to like training the greenies, either. This particular occasion, Will wasn't here for a break. He was here to make sure Merlin was all right.

Neither one of them ever brought that up. Will didn't like seeming to be soft, and Merlin didn't want to admit how glad he was that Will was there.

"Maybe you're right," Merlin said, sinking against the wall and flinching. "Maybe I'm too hard on them."

"Too right you're too hard on them, and good on you," Will said. "If you're a light touch, we'll lose them, yeah?"

Merlin shrugged. "I suppose. We made do, didn't we?"

"We made do because we weren't numpties to start off with," Will said. They'd both gone through university; they had both applied for officer training when they signed up. The greenies on base were greenies through and through: they'd never seen a battlefield, never mind life outside their own childhood homes, never mind the hustle and bustle of advanced education. "At least we knew the difference between the barrel of a gun and the stock, yeah?"

Merlin rolled his eyes. "They're not that bad."

"Yeah. They're not. And it's not like either of us are doing much else than training them in the basics, yeah? It's a quick patch, that's what this is. Just enough training to get them to bob their heads over the water. They're not specialists, they won't be for a while -- they need field experience first, get their superiors to give them evals -- you know what it's like. Are you following?"

"Stop being an arse is what you're saying," Merlin muttered. He shifted uncomfortably, but it didn't seem to matter which way he moved -- his barely-healed scars felt as if they were going to tear. He swung his legs over the side and stood up.

"Nah, I rather fancy you like this," Will said, grinning. "It's about time you found your inner bastard, though you could've done with unleashing him on the likes of Tristan and Bryn, you know, the pillocks who really deserve it. It's a little late for that, but maybe you could hold onto some of that righteous rage and direct it to the appropriate parties, like, oh, I don't know. Walsh?"

The bottle of rum and the bottle of vodka shattered simultaneously. Glass shards went flying, alcohol splashed and dribbled off the table. 

Will exhaled heavily and muttered, "I knew I should've put them out of range."

"Sorry," Merlin said, wincing. He hadn't realized that Cedric Walsh's name alone was a hot button for his magic. __  
  
"Nah, it's all right. This was the cheap stuff, tastes like aftershave, but good for a quick drunk," Will said.

Merlin huffed. He rubbed his face with his hands. "Yeah. Yeah, all right. I get your point. I'll... I'll take it easy on them. I should rework tomorrow's lesson plan."

"Maybe you should," Will said, grinning. "But first --"

Will twisted around and dug through his desk drawers. He came up for air with a blister pack that he tossed at Merlin.

"The good stuff," Will said, gesturing at the six-pack in Merlin's hands. "The base doc's a bloody twat if he doesn't see how much pain you're still in. Take a couple, get some sleep tonight, yeah?"

 

* * *

 

Merlin's class was a picture of fear and contrition, full of bowed heads and furtive looks and rounded shoulders. He saw more than one shaking finger reach out to punch a key, only to withdraw quickly before selecting it.

Last night's problem set had only been a simple 32-bit encryption key. The math wasn't that complicated. It just took time to go through. It couldn't possibly have traumatized them _this_ much.

The class was going through the sims like Merlin had instructed, though none of them knew that he'd altered the program before the class started. He'd gone through Pearson's computer and tracked down the glitch -- it hadn't been a glitch, someone had put it there deliberately. Merlin was betting on a former instructor trying to challenge a gifted greenie -- at least, that was the impression he'd gotten when he'd first shipped in, that the last class had turned out a good bunch of potential cryptographers.

Either way, Merlin went around and inserted the new programming on every computer so that the entire class, not just Pearson, could get a glimpse of just how frustrating it could be when the simple approach didn't work.

He knew the instant that each of them encountered the glitch. Their faces would twitch with stark horror before collecting under a plain blank mask of reserved panic, and they froze, not moving a single inch.

Probably hoping that Merlin wouldn't realize they triggered an error.

The worst was Pearson. When it was Pearson's turn, he looked millimetres shy of going into a full-blown anxiety attack, complete with dumping the contents of his stomach onto someone's feet. Merlin felt a pang of guilt; he _had_ been riding Pearson pretty hard.

Merlin waited to see who would be the first one to get his attention. It was, surprisingly, Pearson. His hand went up in the air slowly, fingers trembling like a leaf.

"Don't tell me. You got the red blinking light again," Merlin said, putting a hard edge in his tone. He walked over and loomed behind Pearson, taking a long, slow look around.

Without a word, he went to the front of the room and picked up a piece of chalk. He wrote several lines of code across the board before turning around to look at the class.

"Um. Sir? Should we get our pencils out?" one of the students asked, resigned.

"If you like," Merlin said, putting his hands in his pockets. He shrugged. "You can start working on the problem set I gave you yesterday, or you could tell me everything you know about cheat codes."

"Sir?" another student asked, confused.

"Cheat codes. You're playing a video game but you can't get past the Big Boss, or you keep getting stuck in the labyrinth, or you're pinned down in Call of Duty and there's no escape. What do you do? You punch in a cheat code to keep going, yeah?"

Two of the greenies exchanged glances. "But, sir. This isn't a video game."

"Everything's a video game," Merlin said, sticking with that context, because who _didn't_ know about video games? "Don't think of the red blinking light as an error. Nothing you've done could've stopped it from coming up on the screen. It's the Big Boss getting in your way and nothing short of a cheat code will get you through, and there's _always_ a way through."

He gestured at the blackboard.

"These are cheat codes. Or at least, they're encryption cheat codes. You can use them to backdoor through a problem like the one on your screen, but the trick is figuring out which one of these cheat codes works. If you enter the wrong one in a game, you get even more stuck, or you end up meeting the Big Boss's _Mother_ , and no one wants that, yeah?"

A couple of the students grinned.

"So before you go and try one of the cheat codes, you should figure out which one will work on your first go. Remember what I taught you during the first class? The key to cracking encryptions is in finding a pattern. The pattern that led you to the error on the screen is going to tell you which cheat code is going to work."

 

* * *

 

Merlin wasn't the least bit surprised when Pearson turned out to be the first to get past the red blinking light. The smile he'd gotten when Pearson realized he was the first to finish was almost as good as a fresh shot of morphine.

Almost.

Merlin waited until his class had left the portable, full of smiling faces and gleeful back-patting, before he took out the blister pack that Will had given him.

He popped two pills and swallowed them dry, sitting down heavily.

_Fucking Walsh_ , he thought. He pulled his laptop over, scrolled around until he found the files his lawyer had sent him, the mystery recording of what had _really_ happened at the clusterfuck of a mission. The files that proved that Merlin hadn't been at fault, but couldn't quite make Walsh culpable.

His finger hovered over the trackpad, the mouse pointer on the PLAY button. He wasn't sure he wanted to click on it. At the same time, he wanted to know _who_ had gotten the files when they'd gone missing -- the official word was _corrupted_ \-- in the first place

There was a faint knock. Merlin startled and looked up. Will was in the doorway, a pinch in the middle of his brow, his mouth in a tight line.

"You all right?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine." Merlin hastily closed the program, _sure_ that Will was seeing clean through him. "What's up?"

Will relaxed, but Merlin knew he hadn't been fooled. "There's a couple of birds, you know the sort? Thought you might want to come with me tonight to the pub."

"Oh, Gods. Will, you know that --"

"One of the birds has a brother," Will said, his eyebrows wriggling meaningfully before his expression darkened and became serious. "Come on out tonight, yeah? It's just for a laugh. Get your mind off of..."

He waved a hand in the air.

Merlin stared at the monitor until the screensaver activated -- a good few minutes. He felt a flush of shame and guilt and anger, all of which stuttered under the sudden stab of pain under his armpit and deep into his chest.

"Fuck," Merlin said, rubbing his face. "You know what? Yeah. Yeah, let's go out. I've got to get my head out of this, don't I?"

"And I've got just the thing," Will said, his words full of bravado, his voice soft. "There's a dart board at the pub with Walsh's mug on it."

Merlin laughed until he was breathless, a painful stitch in his side, tears in his eyes.


End file.
